I've always liked working the night shift, no matter what the job might be. Something to do with the solitude, like keeping a vigil almost. I've always been a night guy, wandering around St. Augustine at three in the morning when I was in school, cruising after-hours clubs in Seattle, watching the sun rise from the roof of my ex's apartment building. Funny thing is I hate big cities, so I live in a place where most everything closes at nine on Sundays and they won't sell ***** before ten in the morning. Makes no sense, but then I again I don't make many decisions that make sense.
One gets the chance to talk to strange people late at night, gets to see some strange things too. I guess I get off on it, the novelty, feeling like I've had some kind of original experience. God I hope I'm not a hipster.
Talked to a man in MN once, and it only bears noting because he didn't actually have a problem that needed fixing. For whatever reason, he felt like talking. Not about random ******* either mind you, he spoke some real philosophy. I won't do him injustice by paraphrasing, suffice to say that he likened the human condition to the process of metallurgy, which isn't all that original, but sometimes you need to hear a person say something and really mean it rather than just read dead words on a page. Whatever, call it pretentious or stupid or childish but he made a good point and I'm sticking to it. The experience had value in and of itself.
So sit back, make yourself a whiskey sour, throw on some David Lynch and place yourself here. It's storming, a real king hell of a thunderstorm, you're tired and punch drunk from staring at electronics too long and chugging coffee all day. The phone rings and you're ******, nobody wants to talk this late. It rings four of five times before you pick up. She doesn't have a problem per se, didn't know that anybody would even pick up, just dialed randomly. Guess you can talk, what the hell else are you gonna do, and you yourself know that you've done the same thing, called numbers in the middle of the night because you gotta talk to somebody, anybody. She makes you think of that Anais Nin book about Sabina, A Spy in the House of Love. And then she says she feels like that. "I've got a hurt inside," she says. You tell yourself you're not an idiot, but you know what's coming next. She says she called from a club. Thirty minutes later, you're sitting there.